Listen to Sturgill Simpson’s New Zombie Ballad, “The Dead Don’t Die”

Sturgill Simpson dropped his first new song in more than three years with the release of “The Dead Don’t Die,” the title track to a new zombie flick directed by Jim Jarmusch.

The new track, which Sturgill penned at Jarmusch’s request, serves as a running gag throughout the film as multiple actors make reference to the song or Sturgill. The new movie opens on June 14, starring Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Selena Gomez and more.

“The motivation for doing it was Jim Jarmusch called me and asked me if I wanted to write a song for his movie,” says Sturgill. “And I think I said yes before he even got the question out. I’ve always loved his work, probably since I was too young to really even understand or be watching, so like Ghost Dog, movies like Dead Man, they had a huge impact on me. I’ve probably seen Ghost Dog like two or three hundred times, so it really is like a sort of a bucket list thing getting to work with him. [It was] the title of the film, so I knew it had to be the title of the song. And then, I’m just reading the script—some little anecdotes and takeaways from what I thought the real underlying message that Jim was getting across. It was different because . . . I’ll usually write my own stuff from a perspective of my own life experience, and this was more . . . this was fun. It was a lot of fun.”